I tensed my body and squeezed my eyes shut in preparation for when Ms. Silverthorn came rushing out of the kitchen at me, but she never came. She just said, "Oh, okay then. Put his bowl there on the counter and I'll add it to the rest of the leftover salad."
My muscles relaxed in surprise and my eyes flew open. What? She wasn't angry that I hadn't finished the food that she'd had to go to the trouble of making for me?
I didn't know what to think in this house. Every time I did something that would've guaranteed an explosive reaction from my father was nothing special to these people. I straightened and stood up when Sophia walked back into the living room with a frown on her face, thinking that she didn't like me sitting down when she was standing. But she waved at me to sit back down, so I did and she sat down opposite me in an identical armchair. "So, do you want to set up your phone?" she asked, pulling out her own.
"Uh, sure," I replied, confused. Admittedly, I had never owned a cell phone before. I had only seen the cell phones the other kids in my class at my old school using theirs. Hold on a second... where was I going to school here? There were two weeks left of summer, so I figured that if the Silverthorns had bothered to send me to school, they would've registered me somewhere by now. Did I dare ask Sophia which school I was going to?
I was ripped from my internal monologue by the intense stare of the girl across from me, and when I noticed that, I jumped and hunched down, head bowing submissively. It was an instinctive reaction when I saw someone staring impatiently at me like that. I heard Sophia sigh, then say something I thought I'd never hear in all my life. "Hiccup, you know I'm not going to hit you, right?"
I looked up at her, startled, and saw the genuine look in her dark brown eyes. Sophia met my green eyes and held them, trying to convey a message of some sort. But what was the message?
"Um... yeah," I said lamely, but no, I didn't know that, not for sure. How could I know something like that?
"Well, I promise that I won't, and my mom won't either," she finished, leaning back into the chair.
"O-okay." Nobody, and I mean nobody, had ever bothered to promise me something like that before. There had been promises of pain from my father and promises of humiliation from the bullies at my old school, but never promises of no violence towards me. Ever.
And just like that, the moment was gone and Sophia was back to typing on her phone. I held my breath, not sure what to do or say. Should I start on the garage now? I still couldn't think of any other reason for why Sophia had pointed it out to me. But then, the girl across from me looked up and set her phone down on the ottoman in front her. "I need your phone, please," she ordered, a hand outstretched.
I jumped to obey her and handed her my phone in a loose grip. Then, for a good fifteen minutes, I watched as she glanced periodically between her phone and mine as she set it up. Finally, Sophia apparently finished and handed it back to me, saying, "Okay, it's set up. I had to look up instructions on the Internet for how to set up that particular model, but I think I got everything. Oh, and I put in the password for the WiFi too."
I was suprised that she would do such a thing for me without being told to. It was... a nice thing to do, I guess. "Thanks," I replied, and meant it.
For the rest of the day, I listened to Sophia introduce me to her book collection (which I could apparently borrow from anytime - it seemed that she was a bookworm too!) and to her nonstop chatter about her summer so far and how crazy small this house was (it had said in their file that they had moved into this house just last year). I was surprised, yet pleased, to find that her chitchat was slowly putting me at ease, making me relax. It was nice to finally loosen up.
When it became time for bed, Ms. Silverthorn came into the living room to quietly inform us that it was eleven o'clock and that we should go to bed soon. I jumped and stiffened, immediately standing up from the couch. I may have gotten a bit more relaxed in front of just Sophia, but when Ms. Silverthorn joined the picture, I froze up.
"G-goodnight, Ms. Silverthorn," I stammered before trotting to the stairs.
"Oh, such a polite boy! Goodnight to you too, Hiccup. Goodnight, Soph." I paused in the middle of the stairs, surprised that the woman had bothered to say goodnight back to me. And she'd called me polite. When I'd been younger and more innocent and had still tried to get my father to love me, I would say goodnight to him every night, only to receive a grunt, or worse, angry yelling for disturbing him. I was still rooted to the spot in the middle of the stairway when Sophia came up behind me.
"Hey Hiccup, what's up?" she asked, poking me in the back. "Are you going to bed, or what?"
"Oh! Sorry," I said. "I just was thinking." And I rushed up the rest of the stairs without another word, closing the door as soon as I got into my room.
"Ookaay... then," I heard Sophia drawl from the stairs, then heard the sound of her feet continuing up and past my door, down the hall to her room before closing her own door. Then, she came out again and I heard her use the bathroom across from my room. Oh yeah! I had forgotten to brush my teeth. I dug my toothbrush and toothpaste out from one of my bags on my bed and poked my head out into the hallway.
It seemed that Sophia had returned to her bedroom and I could hear the sounds of dished being done downstairs, so Ms. Silverthorn wasn't close by either. I darted across the hall and into the bathroom, letting the door swing shut with a sigh of relief. I hated making an excess of noise or bother.
At last, I finished in the bathroom and dashed out again into the safety of my room. I put away my toothbrush and toothpaste, having not wanted to just leave them in Sophia's bathroom, and started to get undressed. As I did, I looked around my room in awe. My old room had felt so much more closed in and like a, well, prison. This thought made me remember my father, who was apparently in jail now. Funny; I had almost forgotten him after I'd arrived at the Silverthorn house.
Honestly, I couldn't say that I was sad that my father was imprisoned. Nor could I say that I was particularly happy, either. At least with Alvin, I'd always known where I had stood with him; here, I didn't know Sophie and Ms, Silverthorn well enough yet. I reflected on how Ms. Silverthorn had made us a salad for lunch today. Was that what mothers did? I couldn't tell, since I'd never had any friends and couldn't compare their mother's behaviour with Ms. Silverthorn.
Finally, I got into my pyjamas and gazed out the window into the street beyond. I cracked it open a bit and relished the myriad of nighttime sounds that flowed into my room: cars going back and forth, dogs barking, insects buzzing, a city bus stopping and dropping off passengers, the wind whispering through the trees...
And how could I forget the sweet, fresh air swirling in as well? To me, all these things spelled two things: freedom and change. Freedom, I could understand clearly enough, but whether or not the change would be a good or bad one, I didn't know yet.
I went to bed feeling oddly lighter than I'd had been in a long, long time. Until I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of someone screaming.
